Dear Jack
by Chicleeblair
Summary: Gwen cannot let Jack leave to travel the world without a means of communicating with him. Not days after losing Ianto. In letters, she documents the rebuilding of Torchwood Three, but whether for his benefit, or her own, she doesn't know. Post CoE
1. Prologue

Every other time he has been in her apartment he has been rescuing her, and so she has never had the opportunity to realize how out-of-place he seems there. Now there is a twang in her chest every time she looks over from making the tea to see him hunched over on her sofa. It's even more bizarre to see his long fingers wrap around her floral-printed mug. She might have commented on it, in another life. Instead she hands it to him and curls up in a nearby armchair.

"They're sweeping it under the rug," he mutters, one of the first things he has said since Rhys left for work that morning. They are all painfully aware of how _wrong_ it is for this to be treated as an ordinary day, but the lorries must go, and Rhys has to save his time off for paternity leave.

"They don't understand," she sighs, sweeping her hand through her hair. Her fingers catch on a tangle, and she winces. The window holds her gaze more than her words do. The bright sunshine seems so disrespectful of the dark days that have passed.

He lets out a long breath. "They didn't understand the First World War, either, but they remembered it. They memorialized it the best way they knew how, and attempted to learn from it."

"They will learn from it," she insists, turning to him. He turns his head and cocks an eyebrow in a way that makes her sure words like: "optimistic Gwen Cooper", is about to come from his open mouth and she continues without letting him speak. "This isn't me being naïve, Jack. That's not who I am any more. I don't have any more faith in their goodness than you do. I have faith in their fear. They don't want this to happen again."

"They didn't want war to happen again either," he retorts but the retort seems to have been automatic, because the way he is staring at her denies his having thought about the words. He narrows his eyes to reexamine her. She holds his gaze, even though the pain in his eyes makes her want to stare down at her tea in pity.

You've changed," he murmurs. "Torchwood darkened you. It does that."

She shakes her head, jutting out her chin fiercely. "So what if it has? So what if I'm not stupid little Gwen anymore, launching tools into space rocks? I've seen it, Jack; I've see what's out there. What it can do, and what people can do. But I still want to help. I want to protect people, even if it's from themselves." _Even if it's you,_ she thinks. That's the one thing that hasn't changed; anyone else in the world would be protecting themselves from Jack, not protecting Jack from himself.

"That's why I hired you." He sighs. "I didn't foresee this, but I saw your ability to see the bad and remain loyal."

His voice is low, and she knows that he regrets taking her from her old life. She doesn't. "We'll rebuild," she says, looking down at her wedding ring. Her finger is swollen around it, once a mark of PMS, now a constant reminder of the child in her womb.

Her statement is an assertion of her decision not to reclaim the dreams of desk sergeant and children. Torchwood is in her now; didn't he just say that?

"You will," he agrees. "There's Torchwood in the 23rd Century, after all."

She blinks at him, but then shrugs it off. He comes out with things like this sometimes. This is not what fazes her. "You?" she repeats. She is careful, soothing. Working with him, Ianto, and even Owen and Tosh has prepared her for motherhood more than anything else.

He stares down at his untouched tea, shoulders sagging. Without much consideration she puts her own tea down and moves over to the sofa to sit next to him; gently, she clasps her hands on his arm. "I have to go," he admits after a long moment. "I can't stay here."

Once she would have objected. Torchwood did need him, that wouldn't be a lie, but she remembered the last time he had retreated. She had been furious; she had taken over command, brimming with uncertainty. Now that there was no certainty anywhere, it seemed less frightening. She also remembered the Jack that had returned, revitalized, fighting for Torchwood. That was a far cry from the man sitting next to her. He knew how to heal himself; or she hoped he did. She wished she knew how to heal him, but there she had to admit ignorance.

"Will you travel with the doctor?"

He lifts his head, and she thinks that maybe he doesn't know her as well as she thought. Then the surprise in his face relents. No, he does know her. He just forgets that time passes and change happens more quickly for mortals.

"No." He licks his lips. "Not unless he turns up on Earth. My wrist-strap got lost in the blast, after all."

"No more magic buttons," she teases. Owen used to give him so much shit for his magic bracelet. She misses Owen in that moment more than she has in a long time. His bitterness did a lot to keep her sane some days. She may be growing cynical, but she is not Owen.

"No," he agrees. "The magic has gone far, far away."

She's not sure about this. The fact that a baby will join her family in a matter of months seems pretty magical, but she lets Jack have the point. "I'll miss you," she says instead. Tears seep into her eye, and she blinks hard. There is so much more to cry over, these days.

He surprises her by taking her hand. Their fingers lace together in a familiar way. "You'll be great, Gwen," he says. "Torchwood will be great."

"It won't be the same without you."

He stands, drawing her up with him. "No," he agrees. "It'll be better. I don't have faith in much, but I have faith in you."

She puts her free hand on his chest, and his heart beats steadily against her palm. Mundane and calm for such a time. "And when the Second World War comes?" she asks. His uniform seems to have separate meaning now. "Isn't that what you've always prepared for? The one that devastates Britain?"

He pushes her chin up to meet his eyes. "You'll be the Churchill to my Lloyd George."

She would shake her head if it did not mean losing the touch of his finger on her chin for the last time for a long time to come. "Be careful, Jack," she instructs.

He removes his hand and turns away. She knows he won't promise, and she won't insist. There are things an immortal man won't swear to.

He walks towards the door, and her heart leaps. _This is happening now_, her brain screams.

"Wait! Jack, I've lost Ianto, and before that Tosh and Owen. You can go, but I need to know that you still exist. Give me that, Jack."

For a fraction of a second he becomes the Jack she knows. A smile comes onto his face; in four days she had forgotten how his smile could warm her. "I'll email you," he promises. "That's what travelers do in the 21st Century, isn't it?"

"It is," she agrees, her own smile wistful.

"There we go then." And without another word he leans down, catching her lips with his. It's a deep kiss, and it tells her that he's not coming back any time soon. Still, when the door has shut, and her lips are tingling, she knows she cannot be certain of this. Nothing is certain.

With calculated movements she takes their untouched mugs to the kitchen and pours them out. This movement causes the twang in her body to snap, and she barely makes it to the toilet before she is vomiting. She wants to blame it on the baby, but she cannot. Her body has to eject her sorrow somehow.

When Rhys comes home, she has regained some control, though she still feels nauseous. She is filling a notebook with plans for rebuilding Torchwood Three. He looks on sadly, as though he hoped that she would let go. She tries to convince herself not to add this to her list of reasons why Rhys is not Jack. She should not have that mental list at all.

Late that night, the plans running through her head keep her awake. She creeps into the living room and turns on the computer. There is no Ianto to erase the memory now, anymore than there is a Jack to erase her memory.

_Dear Jack,_ she begins, as she will begin so many letters for the next six months.


	2. Chapter One

To: .

From: .

Date: 29th October, 2010

Re: Rebuilding

Dear Jack,

I'm trying to give you space, but I want you to know that we're making progress. I'm not sure if you want to know or not. Frankly, I don't care. You have to know. It's been a month since you left and we've done so much.

You're everywhere, Jack. You, Tosh, Owen and Ianto. I've had to sieve through the digital archives for the report to the Crown (more on that in a bit). Everything has your signature and Tosh's coding. I couldn't forget if I wanted to, of course, but every sighting of her, of any of you, makes me more determined. The world, the work, that you fought for cannot die; it would dishonour their deaths. I don't mean to upset you by telling you any of this, but you know what it's like. You were there when Ianto and I found Tosh's fingerprint all over the programming in the Hub, you helped us through it. You've done this so often, Jack, I understand why you didn't want to rebuild again. It's someone else's turn now.

Speaking of rebuilding, that's what the proposal's all about. I reckon I knew it wouldn't be a matter of phoning the bursary and asking for the spare change to rebuild he Hub, but I rather hoped. Maybe it would have been had the 456 not happened. Still, it's a laugh, isn't it? "Why does the world need Torchwood?" For a start, it does wonders for the Weevil population…. Still, things have changed. We're not exactly after the Doctor anymore, and good old Queen Vic's orders aren't pulling much weight either.

So proposal. Maybe I have made it to desk sergeant. That's what head of Torchwood is, isn't it? Desk sergeant with a gun, and a bit more running. Well, like any good desk sergeant I knew I needed someone to help me with the brunt of the work. Although I must admit, I didn't do any stalking of the new recruit the way you might have. I think she's been stalked quite enough by Torchwood, truth be told…

"I did not think this through." Gwen collapsed next to Lois, and rested her head on the back of the seat in front of her.

Lois glanced at her over the top of the magazine she had found left on the chair by its last occupant. "I did wonder," she said. "You've not been well before noon for a week now."

Gwen frowned at her. "You really need your own flat." She sat up, and began rummaging through the bag at her feet for a copy of the proposal they had written to present the next day. "And hopefully we'll be calling an estate agent on the way back to acquire you a living space larger than my sofa."

Lois laughed. "That would be nice. But, just so you know, Gwen, I've been fine with it. You and Rhys have been absolutely lovely. I know it's hard having your flat invaded; and, it's being me puts you face-to-face with everything, all the time, doesn't it?"

"You know, I don't think of it that way," Gwen admitted. "You give me hope. Rhys is used to it, because it used to be Ianto on that sofa. When Jack was working, or being broody Jack, or we had had a bit much to drink. He didn't often want to go to his own flat, and I never pushed it. Jack spent nights there as well. When I'd get up in the morning and see one of them there it reminded me that I wasn't alone, and that was easy to forget after Owen and Tosh."

"You've got Rhys to do that too," Lois reminded her. "Since he knows about it all."

"Yeah, I have." Gwen smiled, brushing a stray piece of hair out of her face. "But I think he rather hoped I'd give up the Torchwood nonsense after the 456. Settle down. We've savings; I could have stayed at home a few years."

"You couldn't have done that."

"No, I-." The train jerked suddenly, cutting off her words. Gwen thrust her hand out, with the reflexes born of police work and Torchwood, but Lois's head collided with the seat in front of her.

"All right?" Gwen asked as Lois sat up, rubbing her forehead.

"Bloody Great Western," Lois sighed. "But, yeah it's—Gwen?"

Gwen had risen, and was peering down the empty corridor. "Lois," she murmured. "Have you seen a conductor or a food cart at any point since we left Cardiff?"

"No, but we've only been gone twenty-."

"Sir, you did say the loudspeaker was broken? So just to be sure it's how many stops to Swindon?"

"Two, I believe. Next stop after mine." The businessman smiled at her over his paper, but then resumed reading.

"Right, thanks."

"Gwen, we're not-." Lois began. Gwen glared down at her, and she pursed her lips. They needed to work on Lois's field tact. Unfortunately, she wouldn't have the time working as just a receptionist that Ianto had had. She and Rhys had managed the few times she'd spotted a Weevil on the street, and the one time Andy had called her about an alien artifact found at a crime scene, but they would need more help, and training for Lois, if this were really going to work.

Certainly, Lois's look when Gwen began to walk down the corridor and motioned for her to follow was a sign that she did not have Torchwood-level paranoia. Still, she followed orders. That was good.

They continued through the train, and Gwen noted that she did not see a single figure of authority. Not even an acne-covered ticket-taker slacking off to flirt with a pretty blonde.

"My dad's a train driver," Lois said as Gwen slid open the door at the end of their car. "Worked for Southwest all my life. London to Portsmouth."

There had been a time when Gwen might have stopped walking to gape at her, but she was more disciplined than that now. She merely turned her head slightly with an eyebrow raised, hoping to convey _what the fuck?_ without much hassle. Lois was not just chatting, though. She was carefully eyeing the seats surrounding them, and Gwen came to the conclusion that she was trying to make them look natural. Maybe this girl deserved more credit than she had thought.

"Really?" she asked, sliding her hand into her hand back to firmly grip the handle of her gun. "Did he let you wear the cap?"

"Sometimes. Took me to work when I fancied a day off school. Really, quite boring in the end, though, sitting on a train."

"Oh, I dunno," Gwen said, putting her hand on the door that lead to the first car. "I think it's relaxing. When I was at college I'd take the train home, just to Swansea, for a bit of calm. Mind, I didn't have a car yet either." She yanked the door open, and gasped as she stepped into the front car.

Rather than the irritable workers who usually sat in the quiet car, she had found the missing rail staff. They were seated, and looked to all be sleeping quite naturally, but for the clouds of purple that were being exhaled each time their chests contracted.

"Oh my God," Lois breathed as Gwen hurried to the nearest person, a conductor who was snoring lightly. The train was jerking more, so she kept her hand firmly on the seat's armrest as she examined him. The queasiness she had been fighting earlier was gone, at least. The purple mist looked familiar, and she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to remember where she had seen it. This was all so much easier with Jack there to be a portable alien involvement encyclopedia.

"Joy Riders," she finally said, opening her eyes. She straightened, and headed towards the door of the driver's compartment.

"What?"

"There's an alien species that likes to take over technology, usually forms of transport. They put the owner to sleep, and stick them somewhere. Then they go messing about with the machinery, or what have you. We've seen it with a car or two before, but nothing like this. Jack swears they did an aeroplane once, but we never believed him. I suppose with the Rift being less patrolled, they thought they'd get lucky."

She put her hand on the door to the driver's compartment. "Lois, your dad, did he ever teach you how to stop a train?"

"I—but other trains on the line-." Lois's hand went to the side of her face in nervousness.

Gwen reached out and put a firm hand on her companion's shoulder, pulling the gun out of her bag with the other. Lois flinched at the site of it. "I do know how to use a radio, Lois. Besides, their sleep secretion only works for half-an-hour, or so at a time."

"I—I—yeah. All right."

"You're sure?" Gwen demanded, as the train lurched violently once more.

Lois's eyes flitted back and forth for a second, but then she took a deep breath and met Gwen's eyes. "Yes."

"Right then, let's go." She opened the door to reveal a white, froglike creature leaping about on the trains controls. It had a huge head, which looked rather like a Hallowe'en skeleton's head. It's long legs ended in long feet, with jointed toes that it used to push the buttons and pull the levers that it couldn't possibly know the uses of. As it bounced around it made a whistling "wheeee," noise, like a child on a swing.

"Freeze," Gwen snapped. The Joy Rider spun, or rather leapt, around. It's bulbous blue eyes blinked at her.

"What are you?" it demanded in a low his. Gwen nodded at Lois who slid in the driver's seat, taking advantage of the creature's distraction. It was not as stupid as Gwen had hoped, though, and it leapt onto Lois.

Gwen saw its head inflate, in what she assumed to be an inhalation that came before secretion. Without a second thought, she pulled the trigger on her gun. The force at close range was enough to cause a veritable shattering of the inflated head. A viscous purple liquid splattered all over the car. Lois shrieked as the majority of it landed on her. "We're Torchwood," she asserted, lowering the gun.

"Stop the train, Lois," Gwen commanded, trying to keep the girl focused. Rule one of Torchwood: alien matter can be washed off later. Lois obeyed, her teeth clenched in misery. Gwen reached out for the driver's radio.

"This is Torchwood," she said into it. "We've a situation on First Great Western, the nine fifty-five train from Cardiff. We've had to stop the train on the tracks, and we need assistance."

There was confusion from the other voices on the line, at first. They responded a bit better when she told them she was special ops, and agreed to send help and a bus to take the passengers of the train.

"Make an announcement to that effect," Gwen told Lois, handing over the radio. The stench of the Joy Rider's blood had finally reached her now that the issue was settled. "Thank God we decided to go over a day early."

Lois nodded, and didn't bother to ask where Gwen was going. Gwen supposed that her face gave away the fact that she was likely to be sick until the bus arrived, and knowing the jostling movement of British buses, until they got to London. Lois could read her. It was good that they had a connection.

Still, they really did need to get the girl her own flat.

Even then it wasn't a matter of taking the thing's body into the conference room and saying, "This is why you bloody need Torchwood," but it did make it a tad easier. Lois is a damn good persuasive writer. I had her do most of the actual writing up of examples, to show her all that we've done, all that we do. She has to understand, doesn't she? That Torchwood is so much bigger than what she's seen before. That we're capable of being bloody fantastic.

Of course, seeing it all on paper is a bit different than getting covered in alien blood. I think she took about twelve showers in the hotel room that night. So did I, come to think of it, when I first got soaked in non-human bodily fluid. It's downright disgusting, but I suppose you do get used to it.

I didn't want to have to kill it. I'm still not the sort to shoot first, ask questions later. But it's not like we have anywhere to jail it, and I didn't want it tranquilizing Lois, and me there not knowing how to stop the train. It wasn't worth the lives of everyone on board, after all. Though, I don't suppose I really thought of all that in the moment before I pulled the trigger. It must have been somewhere in my mind, mustn't it? Do you learn to weigh things without consciously thinking? Or have I changed after all?

I imagine these are questions you must have asked, aren't they, Jack? Tell me your answers, if you get a chance. I can't really see you pausing to check your email in an internet café, with a bad cup of coffee by your elbow, and a bloke doing a drug deal over Skype next to you. But, then again, it's hard to see you being a tourist at all in your RAF coat. It's hard to imagine you as anything but leader of Torchwood.

Will anyone feel that about me? I can't see it.

Anyway, we got the funding. Rhys has contractor friends we're going to meet with this week, and until then we've rented a warehouse by the docks. Bit creepy, after everything we've seen happen at those warehouses, but it was our best option. Lois has a flat, and Rhys and I are going to buy a house after all, now that I've a salary again.

Things are happening, Jack. Good things. Light can come out of the dark.

I miss you,

Gwen

To: .

From: .

Date: November 1st, 2010

Re: RE: Rebuilding

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

-Robert Frost


	3. Chapter Two

To: .

From: .

Date: 23rd November, 2010

Re: team

Dear Jack,

A poem, Jack? Is that all I get? Is it a metaphor for not having the words? You never did really have the words, did you? Always talking, but silent when it really meant something. The lone wanderer, is that what you think you are? Alone with your grief. I can tell you only this: you don't have to be.

So much of this would amuse you, Jack. You should have stuck around just to laugh at me; it would have done you good. When we got the money to rebuild, I went immediately to the city, because they were going on and on about what to do with the Plass. It was tarped over, but obviously couldn't stay that way. Well, they didn't like very much the pregnant woman trying to tell them that no, they couldn't just concrete it over. They had to excavate, and then let the secret base be rebuilt underneath it.

Yeah. There was a phone call that had to be made. You'd never have had to make a ruddy phone call. Still, it worked. They're done clearing out the rubble, and I, meanwhile, am going through the rubble of our contacts attempting to build a new team. There's only so much Lois and I can do on our own, even with Rhys to do the heavy lifting.

How did you choose us, Jack? Waited, didn't you, for the right one to come along. Susie was hired in 2000, right after all those others died. Some others before Owen, but they didn't last. Ran off, and you were there with your retcon, ready to try again. Patient Jack, Vigilant Jack. If only I had that kind of time. The Rift is going mad, Jack. It's no longer the time for patience and vigilance. So I had to put together a team.

Gwen sat at a café in the Bay, across the street and a few lanes down from the Millennium Centre. She never felt quite right being far it these days. She lived in fear that the workmen would find something they didn't understand, and would hurt themselves. Worse, she feared that they would disregard something important, despite her strict instructions to show anything they unearthed to her. She usually left Lois at their new headquarters, with their jerry-rigged Rift monitors, made quickly by UNIT from models Tosh had stored in the archives.

She knew it was unfair, to set Lois on calling contacts and informing them of Torchwood's new operations, and organizing their new base, but she couldn't bear to be there. The echoing warehouse felt wrong. Besides, she mused, someone had to do the fieldwork, and have meetings like this.

Jarring her from her self-assuring thoughts, her mobile began to ring. It was not the familiar tone that signaled Lois was about to send her sprinting off across the city, and good thing because she needed to have this chat. No, it was someone else entirely.

"Martha?" she said, smiling into the phone. She had called the other woman weeks ago, but she was generally difficult to reach.

"Gwen, how are you? I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. Mickey and I were in a spot of trouble in New Mexico. What's going on?"

"I'm all right… look, Martha, I'm going to rip the plaster off, OK? Jack's gone; he left me to rebuild Torchwood, and we need a doctor desperately. So I'm asking—no, I'm begging—would you-?"

She stared down at the cup of coffee in front of her. The one thing that she hated about this café was how small their cups were. Perfect for a pregnant woman, she supposed, but she rather thought this child might just have to have whatever side-effects came from caffeine. Their mother was rebuilding Torchwood, thanks much. She needed it, even with the tiny cups. It took three to make a decent mug of coffee, but it was good coffee. Not as good as Ianto's but—and there it was the hourly think about Ianto… Martha was taking her time wasn't she? Might be time to make Lois stake out the hospital, maybe that one doctor who stitched her arm last week.

"Yeah, of course. Oh my God. Jack is gone?"

Gwen let out a long breath. "Yeah. He's… travelling. Long story. I'm sure you've heard what happened with the 456, and Ianto. It's just me now, and Lois. You'll get on well with her, I think. We can pay to rent you a flat, and get you down to Cardiff. With Mickey, obviously. And if he's looking for a job…."

The bell above the shop door chimed, and she looked up. There he was.

"Actually, he's in Japan at the moment on a commission, but I'll let him know. He's a bit hard to pin down to one place, is Mickey. Oh Gwen, I'm so sorry about it all."

"Thank you. Listen, I'll have Lois arrange more details with you. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon."

"Right. Bye then…" Martha sounded confused, but Gwen was eager to shut the phone. She had that settled, and good thing. They had taken to rotating hospitals with their alien-caused injuries, but she'd had a nurse the week before ask her if she was sure she didn't need help; that it was all right to tell someone, even with the baby on the way. She had expected Rhys to turn abusive at that, but at the nurse, not her.

"Well, hello there, Gwen."

"Sit down, Andy," she said. She shot him a small smile, but she needed this to be business. He had been her partner for a four years, and he was a good bloke, but she wasn't altogether sure she was making the right decision. "Thanks for coming."

"Yeah of course, Gwen. You know I'd do anything for you. So, Sarge says this isn't to be general knowledge, but I know there's a vacancy in the Cardiff Uni neighbourhood. It's not city centre, but I thought you might like a rest anyway. There's one in Splott too, but I didn't think-."

It took her a moment to realize what he was saying, with the excitement of Martha's coming on board, and the necessity of tact with this meeting running through her brain, but when she realized a bubble of laughter rose up and threatened to choke her lest she let it out. So much for professionalism. Andy stared at her, bemusedly, as she laughed.

"Sorry," she gasped, sipping at the water she had ordered with her coffee. "It's—sorry—but you—you think this," she gestured around the café, "is about _me_ needing a job?"

"Well…well, yeah." Andy shrugged. "I mean, I just figured- your base blew up; you were wanted as a terrorist; you've a babe on the way. I assumed…"

_He must have spoken to Rhys_, she thought, straightening up. One evening, when she had come home frustrated with the Cardiff council, he had suggested that she go back to the force. Torchwood could be a hobby of sorts. He hadn't meant it, exactly, but she knew that there was resentment in there somewhere.

She took a deep breath, and regained control of herself. "All right. One," she held up a finger. "I don't need a job; I have one, thanks very much. Two, needing a rest is about the last thing on my mind—or the first, come to think of it, but that's beside the point. Three, I'm offering you a job, you idiot."

He stared at her, his jaw slackening. He did not gape; at least, she gave him that. When the waitress came by to take his order, he ordered a coffee quite normally. Then he went back to staring at her. To give him time to think, she texted Lois.

_Heard from Martha. She's in. Send her the info? _

"You're offering me a job?"

She glanced up, and stowed her mobile in her handbag. "That's right. You see, Torchwood's had a bit of a staffing problem of late."

He accepted his tea from the waitress, and sipped it immediately wincing at the heat. "Torchwood?"

"Well, it is where I work. I more than work there now. I'm in charge."

"You're in charge of Torchwood?"

"Is there an echo in here?" She sighed. She knew she was being harsh on him, but he was giving her that look. The one that said: _oi, what does Gwennie think she's doing?_ And it was true, that he still saw her as the girl who had been his partner; new to the force, getting her head busted at a pub fight. Trouble was, that girl had seen a lot in the past few years. "Yes, Andy, I'm in charge of Torchwood. I'm in charge, and we need people."

"And you want me?" He grinned, and she crossed her legs under the table, leaning back.

"Aye. But it's not all glory, Andy. It's piss little glory these days, so get that out of your head. The Spec-Ops swooping in days are over, really. We're doing the best we can with what we've got to keep Cardiff safe. It's dirty, and hard, and not glamorous. But it's also fantastic."

He still smiled, and she thought she might have won him over. There would be more to do, of course, than just talking him into it, but that was step one. Then he shook his head. "Listen, Gwen. I'm honoured, really I am. But, the best you can with what you've got? Is that all you've got?"

She frowned. "Of course. Isn't it all anyone's got?"

He shook his head again. "You're not following me. You called me, because I was all you could think of, didn't you?"

Her heart sank. He'd hit the nail on the head, actually, but she'd never say that. She leaned forward, putting her hand on his arm. "Oh, Andy, of course not. It's taken us some time to get off the ground; to get to the point where we're hiring. You were the first thing I thought of, honestly."

His lip curled. "Sure. Understanding now, aren't you? Now that I may not do what you want? I'm through letting you manipulate me, Gwen."

A bitter thought about Andy finally having wised up, on the day she needed him to remain malleable Andy, crossed her mind as her mobile rang again. "Hold that thought. Lois?"

"Hey, Gwen, bit of a situation on the police scanner. Over at the Red Dragon Centre, at the video arcade. Think you can-."

"I'll go right over." She snapped the phone shut. "I've got to go." She tossed ten quid on the table for her muffin and coffee, and then dashed towards the door. She knew that he would follow; was counting on it, as a matter of fact.

"Wait! Gwen, where are you going? You can't-."

"As a matter of fact, I can. I have to." She crossed the street, wondering what people thought was happening. Lover's quarrel, she assumed. As if. She knew Andy fancied her, but that was one thing that would never happen.

Had Jack thought that about her? She thought this for only a second, before remembering the way he looked at her sometimes. No. Never.

She slid in through the automatic doors of the Red Dragon Centre, Andy still on her heels. The arcade was to her left, and she wondered what she was looking for, until she heard the shout. "I'm king of the world!"

A boy of about twelve was standing atop one of the video game machines, his arms raised up above his head. There was a group of people surrounding him, including two police officers whom she recognized. She didn't understand why they were standing there watching the boy. He wasn't standing on anything tall enough to hurt him if they propelled him off, nor did he look particularly strong.

Then she realized. They were frozen. "What the-?" Andy said behind her.

Gwen swore, as the boy turned to them, alerted to their presence by Andy's words. He raised a hand towards them, and Gwen had barely enough time to see a dented silver ring with a dark green stone on his finger before a blue bolt shot out of it. She ducked, and the bolt hit Andy, who froze mid-sentence.

Rolling out of the boy's aim was not comfortable with the new bulge the baby had created, but she managed it. She stopped at the base of the game and stood slowly, grabbing the kid's legs before he got a chance to turn the ring on her. She pulled him down, grabbing his arm as soon as she could. He thrashed, but she managed to angle him so that most of his kicks hit the machine, though he did manage to clip her in the mouth with the ring. She ignored the cut, putting the kid on the ground and holding his arm with one hand, pulling the ring off with the other.

"That's _mine,_" he protested. "I won it!"

"Tough luck," she said. "Should have gone for the backpack." She studied the ring, hoping to see a cancel button. Where was Jack's wriststrap when she needed it? "I, uh, don't suppose there was another one?"

The kid had crossed his arms and pulled the hood of his hoodie over his eyes. She rolled her eyes, and slid between the cluster of frozen people to the prize case. Sure enough, an equally archaic ring with a red stone sat inside. She went around the counter, digging through drawers until she found the key to the case. (And a porno magazine, but that was beside the point).

Another minute, and everyone was unfrozen, believing that no time had passed whatsoever. An easy clean-up, and, as a bonus, the kid had run off. The police weren't entirely sure how he got away, but she and Andy assured them his mum had come to pick him up.

"It's not always that easy," she commented as they headed back outside into the blustery day.

"That was easy?" Andy asked. Then the construction site that had once been the Plass came into view. She turned to him, eyebrows raised. "Yeah," he murmured. "I guess it was."

"Think about it," she instructed. "That's all I can ask."

He nodded, once, and she waved to him over her shoulder as she crossed the road to check in with the workmen.

He hasn't said yes or no yet, but I think he'll come through. If not, we've thought about calling up Johnson. She's a bit frightening, and I'm not sure she'll be willing to take my direction. Still, we'll deal with that when it comes. I'm honestly not sure what you'd say about Andy. He'd never survive any of the mindfucks that aliens can give us, I don't think. Then again, maybe he'll surprise me. Lois has.

Did I surprise you, Jack? I imagine we all did. You hired for promise, not for what was already there. I know you offered Martha a job, once, but would you have actually given it to her? She's not exactly raw material. She'll be out here next week. Mickey's in Guam, now. I doubt we'll get him, to be honest, and that's OK. Couples in Torchwood… it doesn't always work, does it?

The baby's moving now. I can feel it inside me, and Rhys can feel him too. Reckons he'll be a footballer. It's a constant reminder of what I'm fighting for. I'm fighting so we never have to see children in danger like that again. That's what it's about in the end, when we learn from things. The difficulty is accepting that it had to happen in the first place. I haven't done that yet, either.

I miss you, so much,

Gwen

To: .

From: .

Date: November 28th, 2010

RE: Re: Team

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view

Edgar Allen Poe


	4. Chapter Three

**A/N **Hopefully this will fix the email addresses...

To: jackharkness[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

From: gwencooper[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

Date: 26th December, 2010

Re: Boxing Day

Dear Jack,

I thought the world was going to fall apart, and take me with it. You must know what happened, unless you are in the Himalayas or something. The whole world is talking about it. The Rift fucking exploded, Jack. How did we not know that was going to happen, with the Rift manipulator involved in the blast? And there's me just letting the workmen go on, not even thinking. So worried about the team not liking each other that I lost sight of what was really going on.

Do you remember last Christmas? I locked us in the Hub to avoid going to Rhys's parents. It was so soon it was after Tosh and Owen's deaths that it didn't feel right. It doesn't feel right this year either, but you and Ianto aren't here to get me drunk on whiskey sours, and make me play Truth-or-Dare wearing a cracker-hat. All in the spirit, you said. Owen would have loved it, Ianto agreed. Well, it's true enough, I guess. Waking up hungover on Boxing Day was a fair trade-off for the smile I saw you wearing when he slept in your arms. It was calm. Peaceful. Like we deserved it.

So what this year made me deserve this?

I'll tell you all about it, whether you want to hear it or not. You have to see what you left, Jack.

It started at Rhys's parents' Christmas party. Doesn't it always?

The chatter echoing around the room was making Gwen's head pound, even as she faked another laugh at something Barry Williams, Rhys's father, said. Rhys must have had his sense of humour embedded in him by an alien, she decided, because he certainly didn't get it from his parents. "So then the secretary," began the man again. Gwen nodded, searching around for Rhys. _Go back to the Brady Bunch_, she thought as her father-in-law gestured with his drink, nearly splashing her.

"Barry, please excuse me. I need to go speak to my husband," she said. She really hoped that they had been there long enough for her to say that she did not feel well, and be allowed to leave. Wasn't that how events with the in-laws were supposed to work whenever you were pregnant and therefore couldn't drink?

She touched the man's arm, lightly, and began to cross the parlour. As she did, another guest entered the room. Rhys's mother, poised near the buffet table for upmost visibility, cried, "Oh, Melinda, how wonderful to see you!"

Gwen turned her head at the call, instinctively, but when she saw the woman she stopped to stare. One of the waiters circulating the room rammed into her, and she was distracted for a moment by helping him steady himself. When she turned back, the woman had joined a group talking by the fireplace. No one was commenting on her wardrobe; at least, there weren't the titters that Gwen would expect to hear about this not being a fancy dress party. Surely she wasn't seeing things?

She blinked. Rubbed a hand over her eyes. No, that woman was definitely wearing a Victorian period dress, and not a soul was commented on it. Gwen shook her head, and continued over to Rhys. Maybe she had missed something; like that this was a loony aunt that no one talked about.

"Gwen, love, you all right?" Rhys smiled at her when she took his arm. He seemed a little unsteady as she watched him, and she sighed to herself. She'd be driving home, headache or no.

"Yeah, just a bit tired. Listen, Rhys. I need you to, in a bit, turn round and look at that woman standing behind us. No not now, wait a moment." She put a hand on his cheek, hoping that this combined with her undertone would distract the cousin whom Rhys had been speaking to. She kissed him, and then let go, turning to the cousin.

A few moments later, Rhys whispered in her ear, "I looked. What was I looking for?"

She licked her lips. He wasn't _that_ pissed. "Did you notice anything odd, sweetheart? About her dress?"

"No, why? Wrong colour or something? You know me, Gwen. No eye for fashion."

"Right," Gwen said, trying to force a smile. So, was she the only one who saw it then? Her head began to throb. "Rhys? Could we go home soon, love?"

He had gotten back into the conversation with the cousin, and was gesturing widely to prove some point, with the arm that Gwen was not holding onto. He stopped mid-gesture and glanced down at her. "A bit, all right? We haven't been here that long."

She nodded, wincing, and let go of his arm. She wandered across the room in search of a chair and sat down, hoping to blend in with the woodwork. She took out her mobile as she did so. There were several messages from Martha, and Gwen wrinkled her nose as she looked at it.

_More Weevils. Is all you get in this feckin' city Weevils?_

_Did you know that Lois is afraid of Weevils? Great trait, that. _

_Just because I'm Dr. Torchwood does not mean I'll be the Weevil master, a la Owen_.

Gwen rested her head in her hand, pressing her palm firmly against her forehead. She knew that Martha resented the amount of Weevil chasing she had to do, but they were running rampant. And, now that Torchwood had just gotten holding facilities again, they had to control them. Lois _was_ afraid of them, and there wasn't much that scared the girl, so Gwen granted her leeway. Andy was their police contact, so with the amount of alien garbage showing up at crime scenes, he was often elsewhere. So, Weevil hunting fell to Martha, and she wasn't pleased about it. She also got this way whenever Mickey was out of town; oftener than not, Gwen noted. They seemed really happy when he was there, and Martha was the perky girl who had once showed up to bring the aid of almighty UNIT to backwoods Torchwood; but, when he was gone she could be a right bitch.

Shame she had gotten so dependent on a man. Gwen didn't think her capable of that.

Then again one mightn't expect that of her either, she thought as she eyed Rhys, who was across the room sipping on another drink. As she watched, she was startled out of her thoughts by the Victorian-dressed woman crossing her path again. She was closer this time, and Gwen noted that her dress was a high-quality replication. She had just thought this when the pain in her head increased enough to cause a small yelp to escape her lips. One of the older women on a nearby sofa turned to look at her. She offered a tight smile, and turned to go back to Rhys, sliding her phone back into her handbag. It clicked against something, and she took a breath to steady herself. It was OK.

"Darling, can we go please?" she asked, taking his arm again.

"Is it work?" he demanded. She noted a vein that had enlarged in his forehead, one that often appeared when Torchwood interrupted their lives.

"No," she murmured, fighting to keep her teeth from gritting. The noise of the party pressed against her, threatening to engulf her with the pain it caused.

"Sure it isn't. It's always work, isn't it? And I know you're doing great things, Gwen, so don't bring that up. I just wish it would give us a break on Christmas."

"It's December 23rd," she snapped, louder than she'd meant to. "And I told you, it's not work. I'm not—I'm not well, all right?" She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to focus. His face was swimming a little before her, and she realized that the headache had brought tears to her eyes. It had been a long time since she had cried out of anything except frustration.

Rhys's face softened a little, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Is it the baby?" he asked. She shook her head. "All right," he nodded. "We'll go."

"Thank you," she said.

"I'll get our coats," he said, squeezing her hand. She nodded, and pushed through the crowd to get the door, consciously avoiding looking at the woman's dress. Something was not right, but she did not know how to go about finding out what it was.

Outside, she demanded the keys as she let him slide her coat on for her.

"Sure you're all right to drive?" he asked, as he fished them out of his pocket.

"Sure you're not," she countered. He nodded, sheepishly, and she went around to the driver's seat. The cold air was clearing her head a little, which she was thankful for.

"I'm sorry I got angry in there," Rhys said as she started the car. "You know I'm proud of you, right?"

"Course I do," she said quickly. "It's fine."

Rhys nodded, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. A few minutes later he was asleep. He slept until they reached their house, and was again snoring before she had put on her pyjamas. She lay awake, resting her hand on her belly, trying to see what she was missing

In the bright sun of the morning, Gwen thought that whatever sleep she had gotten had made things better. Her head felt released from the vice-grip that had held it the night before, at least, and that was something to be grateful for. She left early in the morning, as usual, stopping at the nearest café to their headquarters for her clandestine cup of coffee. Rhys and Martha had both taken to lecturing her about caffeine intake, and she was being cautious, but she needed them to try being head of Torchwood without some stimulant.

She went into the warehouse a few minutes later, to be greeted by a displeased look on Martha's face. "You're going to coffee yourself into miscarriage, and your husband will blame me. 'You're around a doctor all the time!'" she said, in what was, admittedly, a very good impression of Rhys.

"I'm not," Gwen argued, tossing the empty cardboard cup into the trash. "I know I'm not, all right? I've a feeling."

Martha's scowl said what she thought of Gwen's feeling, but she did not continue harping, because Lois came in, interrupting them. "What are you-?" Martha began. Her eyes were so wide that Gwen turned to look at Lois. The headache that had dissipated reappeared. She wondered if it were possible for it to be caused by the bright colours in the pattern of Lois's clothes.

"What?" the receptionist said, taking her seat.

"Your clothes. They're right out of the sixties, and believe me, I've been there."

"Don't be daft," Lois said, clicking on her computer. "It's what I wear. Or is this something new you've found to take the mick about?"

"Gwen, I'm not seeing things? She is wearing something absolutely ridiculous?"

"It's a bit odd, yeah," Gwen said, looking down at her buzzing mobile. _Emma_. "ellHH

Hello?"

"Hi, Gwen! Is it still all right for me to come for the holidays?"

"Of course, Emma," she said, smiling with a little relief. She had invited the girl after she had called earlier in the month, not knowing whom else to turn to when her boyfriend had left her. She'd grown a lot, but was still a girl out of her time and mostly alone. "It'll be lovely to see you."

"Brilliant! Um… listen, Gwen, also, this might sound a bit mad but…"

Gwen's heart sank. "Spit it out, love."

"It's just, in the shop today I've seen a mess of clothes that weren't there before, and the thing is they all look like they could have come off the rack at Woolworth's, at home. I don't mean fifties chic, either. Fifties cheap, more like."

Gwen sank into her desk chair with a frown. "OK."

"Yeah. No one seems to know anything about it, but I thought you might. It can't all have come out of the Rift, could it?"

The immediate 'no' was stillborn on her lips. "I—I don't know, Emma. I'll see what I can find out. See you soon."

"See you," Emma echoed.

Gwen set the phone down, and turned on her computer. Searches for out-of-time clothing, or retro did not bring anything out of the ordinary up. She tried reenactment, and other ideas that might have caused an upswing in older-looking clothes, but again nothing. Yet, she noticed that many sidebar advertisements had pictures of women and men dressed in fashions that had not seen the light of day in decades.

"Hey, Martha have you-?"

Her question was cut off by the sound of two phones ringing at once. Her mobile, and Lois's landline. She listened, trying to keep one ear open when she heard a gasp come from across the room. "Cooper."

"Gwen, you need to get over here. I stopped by the site this morning, for a look. There's something wrong."

"Please, please tell me they've just hit another water main, Andy."

"I wish," he said. "Come as soon as you can."

She hung up without a sign-off, because Lois had come over to her desk, white-faced. "Gwen? The hospital needs Martha. They said the computers told them to call Torchwood."

"Hospitals? Plural?" Lois nodded, and Gwen sucked in a long breath through her teeth. "Right then. Have her go, and report back to me."

Martha was across the room, on the phone. Gwen stood, handbag in hand, about to go out to see what Andy had seen, but Martha put a hand out to stop her. Gwen tapped the toe of her boot impatiently, but waited for Martha to finish. "Andy's got a situation at the building site. God knows what they've brought up."

"Yeah, well tell the Bobby to take a moment to cool his heels," Martha said. "We've got worse problems. They're reporting smallpox and bubonic plague over there."

"Oh my God."

"Yeah," Martha said, walking over to their small medical bay to go through the supplies she'd ordered for it a month ago. "And the thing is, they don't seem to notice that anything's wrong. The computers told them to call Torchwood, so they did. No doubt Tosh and Owen programmed that in?"

"Yeah," Gwen murmured. "After the last time the Rift…" Suddenly, she knew. She turned and ran for the door of the warehouse.

"The last time the Rift what, Gwen?" Martha called after her. "What's going on?"

Gwen heard her, but she couldn't respond. Blood was pounding in her ears, and her body had gone colder than the air outside could have caused. She ran through the bay, though usually for this trip she took the car. She did not have the mental capacity to think about parking, or driving for that matter.

She reached the building site sooner than she expected, the time taken up by her mind's reeling. There was no telltale glowing light, no strange creatures climbing out of the chasm, demanding blood. Instead there were ancient looking crane trucks, and a dump truck that could have come out of a nineteen-forties children's book. Andy stood on the edge of it all, talking to a man who was so old that his back was doubled over.

"Andy, what is it?" she asked, coming over to him. She found that she was gasping for breath, though she barely remembered running.

"This man says he was one of the workmen," Andy said. His eyebrows raised at her, and she knew he didn't believe the man. Andy's ability to suspend disbelief still needed work. "Says he was at the edge of it when all the others suddenly began to age."

"They died before my eyes! Hundreds of years aging, then poof!" the man wheezed. He reached out a hand, and grabbed her arm tightly. "Dust they was! Dust in front of me!"

Gwen crouched, with a soft grown at the pain that had moved to her back as well. "Sir, I am so sorry. We're going to find out what happened, all right? But sir, I need you to answer a question for me, all right? Is there anything odd about your equipment?"

"Gwen, what-?"

She waved a hand behind her to hush Andy.

"Our what? The equipment? No miss, nothing amiss with that. It's the men I'm talking to you about! And me! What'll my missus say? And my men's families? What do I say?"

Gwen stepped back, pulling her arm from him. She did not know what to say to him. This was something that the amnesia pill could not fix. "Andy-."

She was interrupted by her mobile, again. This was going to be one of those days when she wanted to chuck the thing in the bay. "Cooper."

"Gwen, there's been a Weevil attack near the uni," Lois said. Her voice wavered a little, and Gwen knew how alone the girl must feel in the base by herself. "Martha's just left for the hospital and-."

"Andy, go pick up Lois and get to the uni. Weevil," Gwen shot at him. He made a face. She gave him her best stern look. They were going to have to cure Lois of this Weevil thing. The old man was watching them, wide-eyed. Andy jogged off towards his car, and Gwen hung up with a sigh. There never seemed to be Weevil attacks on top of huge crises when Jack was there. To make matters worse, she was the only one who seemed to realize how huge the crisis was.

"Sir, I'm very sorry, but I've got to go," she said. She gave the man's arm one last squeeze before heading back towards the warehouse. They should have spent more time with him, helped him explain things to his wife, but there were bigger things to deal with. Sometimes, she wished she had a person who would be to her what she had been to Jack. The one who made sure that these little things got done. She tried her best, but there were moments like this where there just simply wasn't time.

_No_. she told herself. _Andy'll have the man's details. You'll get him to take care of this._ The thought was reassuring, but she knew there was a slim likelihood of follow-through.

The run felt much, much longer this time. When she knew what she had to do when she got there, it felt as though she would never arrive. Finally she did, bursting through the doors into the empty space. Her breath caught, almost choking her, when she saw the wooden desks that had replaced their modern furniture. She hurried to the one that was in the place of her own, and began the search through the archives.

She found what she needed. When you had to control a major rift in time and space, there was no benefit in hiding the plans for the machine that did so. The trouble was, Gwen admitted as she read through them, that a Rift manipulator was necessarily an incredibly complicated device. She was only halfway through the necessary materials when her mobile buzzed yet again. If only ignoring it was an option.

"Hello?"

"Gwen, what is going on? No one here seems to realize that polio is vaccinated against! And you should see the nurses' uniforms."

Gwen swallowed. "The workmen hit the Rift manipulator, or exacerbated the damage that it had already attained."

"Shit. What are we going to do?"

"I'm working on it. I've got the plans, I just need to figure out-."

"There isn't time, Gwen. People are dying. We need to do something now."

"I know I—hold on, it's Andy."

"Gwen? Are you sure there was a Weevil in the forest?"

"The forest? No, Andy, it's at the university." She kept scrolling through the plans, hoping to see something that would reveal a clue as to how she could fix this.

She definitely did not expect laughter as a response to her correction. "Gwen, don't be daft. There's no uni in Cardiff! The idea. Are you all right?"

At that moment, her eye came upon the name of a metal she had never even heard of, and she let the phone fall away from her ear. "No," she murmured, as she it clicked shut. "I'm not."

She slid out of her chair, resting her arms on her knees and letting her head fall to the floor. It was throbbing, and her vision was blurry. This was too much. She was supposed to be able to fix things, to solve the problems. This was her job. She was supposed to know what to do in a crisis, or at least how to wing it. Other people clearly expected her to, judging by her mobile, which kept buzzing. Their voices echoed in her head: Martha demanding answers in her superior tone. She didn't try to use it, but the implication of "I've seen this all before, and you haven't" were clear. Andy's confused tone that met her with every new alien she mentioned, and loyal Lois who was afraid of the teeth of a Weevil.

The noise kept going, unceasing, until it was joined by another, a more unearthly one. Was that the world falling apart? She found that she didn't care much. The world was ending, and Martha worried that her caffeine consumption would hurt her baby. Petty, when there were so many worse things out there.

"Hello, Gwen Cooper."

Her head snapped up, and she pulled her gun out of its holster. Then she shrieked at the face that was level with hers. She had not noticed his footsteps as she sat there. "Who are you?" she demanded, pressing the gun to his large forehead.

"Loaded question," he said. "People call me a lot of things, but I'm the Doctor."

"I've seen the Doctor. You're not him," she said, remembering the wide-eyed man who had been on the monitor while Jack was off saving the world, yet again.

"Ah, yeah," the man said, rubbing his chin. "Did Jack not mention that part? Bit of a change every now and then. He's seen it, seen different 'mes'. I suppose you could say I've seen different 'hims' too. "

Gwen didn't voice the fact that she would give anything to see any form of Jack right then, she just shrugged. "Jack didn't say a lot of things. Why are you here?"

"Well, I was dropping some friends of mine round their place for the holidays, and I thought I'd fuel up. Hadn't realized how much of a mess the place was in, but the rift spikes were astronomical, so I thought I'd check it out."

"Thought you'd come see the mess we'd gotten ourselves in, now, did you?" she demanded. "Now that we've gotten ourselves in too deeply to fix?"

He seemed genuinely taken aback at the hostility in her voice, and he tilted his head with a frown. She wondered if he knew about the 456. The possibility that he did not made her lower the gun, but not all the way.

"Aw, now, don't say that! You can fix it. I can help."

Gwen snorted. She had lost whatever faith she may have had in this Doctor, long ago. "I don't know how to build a Rift manipulator, and it could take years, couldn't it? I don't think we've got hours." Her mobile buzzed again. "And they won't leave me alone long enough to figure it out. All I can think is, Jack was always prepared for the worst. Wouldn't he have stowed away parts for a rift manipulator, oh I dunno, away from the thing itself? But he never went anywhere else in Cardiff, did he?"

"Well, first things first," he said, taking her mobile from her hands, and shutting it off. "They have to trust you. They'll learn to do that by seeing that you know what you're doing."

"I don't!" she insisted, tears welling in her eyes. "I don't know what I'm doing!"

"Oh, Gwen Cooper," he soothed, putting his long-fingered hands on her arms. "Sure you do. Come on. Where would Jack have put spare parts?"

"Are they in your ship?" she asked, hopefully. That would be the easiest thing, and would make sense. He could always know that they'd end up back at the Rift at some point. The man shook his head. "Well, then I don't know." He frowned, touching his forehead to hers. It was a comforting gesture, and nothing more. This wasn't Jack, with whom every move was tinged with the sexual. This man was soothing; he was there to help her think.

"Alice," she said.

He grinned. "Good thinking. Who's Alice?"

"Jack's daughter. He didn't tell you either?"

"Well, he didn't name names as such, but I know who she is," he exclaimed, pulling Gwen to her feet. "Not a lot I don't know."

"So you know what's going on here?" she demanded, following him outside. The street was now lined with buildings out of a Dickensian novel. If it had been a different situation, she might have worried about the creaking wooden sign that said "Torchwood" over their door.

"More or less. I imagine the open Rift has allowed more than just things to come through. Concepts and ideas, I imagine, which have taken root in the conscious. Those who've traveled through it, or through time, are immune because they've different body chemistry."

He had led her to a bright blue police callbox, and she followed him in, acting on the faith of Martha and Jack's stories. If this wasn't the Doctor at all, and just some mad man with a box, it couldn't make the situation any worse than it was.

"But I haven't traveled through time," she protested, stepping through the door.

"Bigger on the inside," he said in response, as they entered the huge chamber. Lights flashed at her, and bits of machinery clicked as they passed by them. Everywhere she turned there were staircases that led to who-knows-where. It occurred to her that Jack had once known this place, gone up those staircases. That was another part of him she could never know.

Was she now a part of him someone else would never know?

"Yeah I know. I work with Martha, you know," she said to respond to The Doctor, and keep her mind away from Jack. He nodded as she followed him into a control room. The odds and ends that were attached to the console he began dancing around would have been fascinating if she had not been so distracted. Though, even in her worried state, she did wonder what the typewriter was for.

"Ah yes. Lovely girl. Great archer."

"She can be great, sometimes."

He did not seem to hear this, and she shrugged, standing back against the wall. "Hold on!" he pushed several buttons, and they began moving. She stumbled, and put a hand to her belly protectively. "This will get us there faster than a car, especially if it's been replaced by a horse-and-cart." He turned to her and grinned cockily, arms crossed. "Anyway, as to you, what's in your handbag?"

"Nothing," she lied, straightening up with one hand on the wall for support.

"Try again," he said, shooting her a glance with eyes that looked as though they belonged to the ages. The look so reminded her of Jack that her throat constricted. With shaking hands, she reached into her handbag and pulled out the damaged wrist-strap. The Doctor nodded. "There you go then. It's made you immune."

She turned the weathered leather strap over in her hands. The buttons were useless now; she had tried pressing them in the hopes that they would work. No one currently working for Torchwood would recognize it, she thought, and at the least the power it gave to open doors might make her feel close to Jack. Like she had some sort of claim to the title of leader of Torchwood. Instead, she was pathetically carrying the broken thing around with her. It seemed to mock her, now. It was such a tiny gadget in the face of the Doctor's technology, and she knew it should not mean as much to her as it did.

"He left," she whispered, fingering the frayed edge of the leather.

"I know."

"Will he come back?" She raised her eyes hopefully to the man, who was carefully watching a monitor, and avoiding her gaze. The vibrations of their journey ceased. For what seemed like far too long the silence continued, then the Doctor strode over and put his hand on her shoulder, crouching slightly to meet her eyes. "I can't tell you that."

"Because you don't know, or because you don't want to tell me?" She was almost afraid of the answer. The change in his demeanour from playful to serious made her think that she wouldn't like it.

He gave a small smile. "I can't tell you that, either. Come on then, let's go!" he bounded off, certain that she would follow

She decided to take his ambiguity as reassurance of what she knew rather than as hope. Jack would not be back; she had to think that, and stop holding back in the wishes that he would come save the day. It was now her job.

"Oh, and for the record," the Doctor said, standing at the door. "Don't think you can't do this, just because I'm here now. I started this whole Rift thing, so I'm a bit tied to it. You'd have figured it out without me, too."

She wasn't sure she believed him, but now was not the time to dwell on it; it was the time to take action. They had landed on a suburban street, and though the out-of-time houses around them made her headache return. The Doctor nodded towards the house directly across from them, and she made a beeline for it. The only sound was the click of the heels of her boots as she mounted the steps. She paused at the top for a second, and then rapped on the door.

Her eyes were so like his. "Alice?" she said.

The woman crossed her arms, and nodded warily. She did not seem to recognize Gwen, which was to be expected. Gwen had been at the back of the chapel during Steven's funeral, an emissary of sorts for Jack. He had come, but was more broken than she had ever seen him, and would not get out of the car. So Gwen lingered in the back so that she could tell Jack that it was lovely, and Alice had someone sitting with her, holding her hand.

In actuality, the woman with her had been Steven's teacher, and the gossips nearby said they barely knew one another. The news had allowed Jack to eat, at least, so Gwen kept the secret.

Now, she spoke to the woman whom she had last seen hunched over on a pew. "I'm Gwen Cooper. I worked with your father."

"I don't have one of those, try the next house down." She put both hands on the door and shoved.

Gwen slid her foot in the crack, wincing as the door hit it. "Please listen to me. Cardiff's in danger; the world's in danger. I just need something that he might have left here. A bag of materials, or something?" She bit her lip, suddenly wondering if this was quite the long-shot. Jack could have hidden it all under Cardiff Castle for all that she knew.

The woman's eyes narrowed. Gwen took this as a positive sign, and raised her chin determinedly. Alice gave her a long, surveying glance during which Gwen noticed her eyes lingering on the bulge of the baby.

"Please," Gwen added. "If there's anything, please give it to me. Then, I'll be gone, and you'll not be bothered with us again."

Their eyes met, and Gwen tried not to wince at the amount of pain there were in Alice's. The other woman blinked first, and then stepped back into the shadow of the foyer. "Stay there." She returned a moment later with a large bag. "Here," she snapped, thrusting the military bag into Gwen's arms.

Gwen stepped back to find the Doctor immediately behind her. He didn't seem to make noise when he walked, this one.

"No heavy lifting for you," he said, grabbing the bag.

She rolled her eyes, and turned back to Alice who was still watching them. "Thank you," she said. "You've no idea how much this means."

Alice was not listening to her words, though. Her harsh gaze had moved to The Doctor, and the police box parked across the street. "The man in the blue box," she said, almost to herself. "He used to tell me stories about you. The one better at saving the world than even Torchwood."

"I don't know about that," The Doctor said. "We do things differently, that's the main difference."

"Yes, well. You wouldn't have killed a little boy to do it."

The Doctor's brow furrowed. "People have died," he said, and then slung the bag over his shoulder, motioning for Gwen to follow. As she nodded to him, the door to the house shut with an echoing click.

"Cheer up," he told her, as they crossed the road. "This feels like a fully assembled gadget. Well, device. Gadget was another thing."

"Another woman devastated by Jack Harkness," Gwen murmured, ignoring his cryptic statement as they went back to the Doctor's ship. She imagined one quite often needed to ignore his cryptic speech, just like with Jack.

He put down the bag inside. "Yes," he agreed. She was surprised, having expected him to defend Jack. "But when you live so long, it's hard not to hurt people. A lifetime means different things."

She thought about that as they travelled once more. Jack had been in Cardiff longer than most lifetimes. Did that mean his time had come to find a new one? She hoped not. He had left too many open lifetimes to decide to close his.

But hadn't she decided not to hope he came back? She shook her head at herself, and grabbed onto an overhanging piece of metal as the ship jerked into motion once more.

When they landed again, she stepped outside to find herself in the middle of the crater where the hub had been. The excavation had cleared out the rubble from most of what had once been the hub, and there was scaffolding up for the rebuilding. She hadn't wanted to see this, with the walls of the old hub still visible in some places. She tried to focus her attention on the torn-up piece of machinery in front of her. "Let's fix this," she said, crouching in front of it with some difficulty.

The doctor nodded, his hair flopping as she did.

Together, though with him doing most of the work with his glowing metal rod (he called it a screwdriver, but she wanted to see another screwdriver that glowed green), they installed the new device over the old. It fit in nicely, once the broken parts were cleared out, but she could not let out the breath she was holding lest a misplaced piece of metal open the Rift. A hungry alien appearing on the spot she did not want. When it finally seemed like they had succeeded, the Doctor stood back once it was installed, letting her examine it.

"So, to tighten the hold again it's…" she trailed off, staring at the buttons that resembled almost exactly the ones on the old device that Jack never let her touch. In organizing the new Torchwood she head read all the manuals, and she was supposed to know this. The Doctor nodded at her, and she took a deep breath before beginning.

There was a loud metallic noise, and a bright light that made Gwen turn away. Then, nothing except the rhythmically flashing lights that it always emitted. "Did it work?" she asked.

"Let's go see." He offered a hand and pulled her up, keeping hold of it as he led her inside the police box.

"I always thought you did a lot of running," she said as they traveled once more.

He grinned, and pulled a lever. "Well, I do. But running and climbing would be endangering something more than you and me," he said with a smile, nodding at her belly. She smiled, resting a hand on the bulge. Her wedding ring sparkled up at her, and with a twinge of guilt she realized that she had not told Rhys about the Rift opening. There hadn't been time. A flutter against her belly distracted her from this once more. The baby had begun to kick.

"Take care of that. I know it doesn't feel like a fair trade yet, for all the loss."

She glanced up sharply, letting her wrist fall. "How did you-?"

There was a jostle, and she knew they had landed again. Her eagerness to see what had changed won over her desire to know what this man knew, and she darted out onto the street. Everything looked as it had done the day before. Night was falling, causing her to realize how much time had passed while they worked, but the buildings were all as they should be in 2010.

"We did it!" she exclaimed, jumping in the air. Excitement flooded her in a way that she had not felt in ages. There had not been much rush of a job well done in the past few months; endings had always come with new beginnings.

"You did it, Gwen Cooper," the doctor said, leaning against his ship. "You're brilliant. She's brilliant. You listen to her," he added, to someone standing in front of them. Gwen turned. Martha had come up to the street, her white coat over her arm. "She knows more about this job then even you, Martha."

Martha nodded, but went into the building without a word. Gwen turned back to the man and impulsively kissed his cheek. "Thank you," she said.

He grinned, tweaked her nose, and then went inside the box. She took a minute to consider the fact that her nose had been tweaked by someone who looked younger than she was.

Inside, Martha was tossing files into her bag. "Gotta go," she said. "Mick's surprised me; he's home for Christmas. You got it all sorted? The plague victims just disappeared."

"Yeah it's done. Martha didn't you want to say-?"

"Not to him. He's not my Doctor. It's hard to explain. I-." Martha bit her lip, and shrugged.

As happened in Torchwood, she was interrupted by Gwen's mobile. "Rhys, I'm so sorry."

"Gwen, guess what? I'm here with your fake cousin, and she says to get your arse up here before we have all the party without you."

She heard Emma's musical laughter in the background, and the knot in her throat loosened. Things were all right, at least for now. "You bloody well better not," she said. "I'm on my way. And Rhys?"

"Aye?"

"I love you."

"I love you too."

She clicked off the phone, and grabbed her handbag. She rested her hand on the wrist-strap, thinking about putting it down on her desk. Then she remembered that it had protected her, and allowed her to see the truth. She left it there, just in case. Then she ran off into the clear, Christmas night.

I see why you love the Doctor, Jack. He kept saying I could have done that on my own, and maybe I could have. I don't know. What I do know is that I will be able to from now on. Tomorrow we're all going to have a chat about what it means to be a team, to have duties and to realize what we're fighting for. I'm going to stop believing that it will all be better once we get a Hub. We have to be working well before then, after all.

You made it look so easy, but you did not know what to do all the time either did you? Did you ever curl up in a ball on your office floor, sure that the world would end? You did the equivalent. You're doing it now. Maybe I'll do it again, but I am going to fight like hell not to want to. That's what we do here, Jack, we fight like hell. We face our fears, and we know each other well enough to know that the Rift manipulator is at our estranged daughter's house, or whatever.

That's Torchwood. The bunch of ragamuffins I have chasing after Weevils is not. But it will be, if I have anything to do with it.

You can bet on that.

I miss you,

Gwen

To: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

From: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

Date: 26th, December 2010

RE: re: Boxing Day

And I will light a candle for you.

To shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew. Like a beacon in the night.

The flame will burn bright

and guide us on our way.

Oh, today I light a candle for you.

The seasons come and go,

And I'm weary of the change.

I keep moving on,

you know it's not the same.

And when I'm walking all alone,

Do you hear me call your name?

Do you her me sing the songs we used to sing?

You filled my life with wonder,

Touched me with surprise,

I always saw that something special deep within Your eyes.

And through the good times and the bad,

We carried on with pride.

I hold onto the love and life we knew.

~Paul Alexander


	5. Chapter Four

To: Jack[dot] harkness[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

From: gwen[dot]cooper[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

Date: January 23th, 2011

Re: Cats

Dear Jack,

I reckon the others thought that the new Rift manipulator was going to be a huge game changer. It's a fair assumption, but I knew better. Martha and Los don't know much about Cardiff, or the Rift, and as for Andy, well, he never appreciated how much work we did, did he? To be fair, things have called down a bit, and they're all celebrating it. I can't help but keep one eye open for disaster. Quiet is too quiet when the Rift is concerned. I have to go back to your old log to remember that there was a time that I didn't know that. Still, I'll take the peaceful moments when it comes. My mum assures me that whatever peace the Rift gives me, the baby will take away.

The team is getting on better. Andy makes a point to take Lois Weevil hunting with him. He's exposing her to her fear little-by-little, and I think it's helping. It's that or the fact that we've actually gotten the Weevil spray recipe figured out again, and made a huge batch of it in my new kitchen last week. Rhys was even tolerant of the smell. Anyway, small things like that are helping them. And as for me, I'm properly pregnant now. Huge, really. Rhys moved us into the house whilst I've been building all of this. He's all for wallpapering the nursery at the week-end. To humour him, I stopped by the shop yesterday. D'you think that he'd have a problem with the print of the wee green aliens with blue spaceships? I rather think Ianto would love it.

Look at me, being all domestic. It's not a mark of things being simple around here, that's sure. Actually, we have quite the interesting space junk, a few weapons, and something that looks like an iPod a few decades from now. What I think you'd be most interested in is the refugee (Riftugee?) we're currently housing.

"No, I don't mind, love," Gwen said, letting her feet slide off of her desk so that she could read the memo that Lois had sailed to her in the form of a paper aeroplane. "If you can tolerate dinner with my mum and dad."

She scanned the paper and sighed, twirling a pen over her fingers.

"Nah, no worries. I'll have it all set up by the time you get home."

"Brilliant man. I love you."

"I love you too. Enough to go be a man and provide a crib for my child."

She laughed, and clicked her mobile shut. She then pulled up her email on the screen next to her. "UNIT needs to learn a vernacular," she mused. "When I say the thing looked like a solid mass of glitter, I mean that it escaped from art class, and doesn't get all over your hands."

From across the room, Martha looked up from the alien remains that they had found at a building site the day before. "No one in UNIT ever liked art class."

"We've got yet another missing 5' 8", nineteen-year-old male," Lois called. "This is not a random pattern.

"All right," Gwen murmured, considering her email to the weapons specialist at UNIT. "Let's go-." She paused as her mobile began again. Lois had taken to resetting the ringtone once a week to stop them all going mad.

"Cooper."

"Are you Gwen?"

She bit back the sarcastic "depends on who wants to know", due to the uncertainty in the woman's voice. "Aye, who's this?"

"It doesn't-." There was a long inhalation and Gwen opened her mouth to speak, then the woman cut her off. "It's Alice. Look, I don't want anything to do with you people, but there is something going on in my street that you need to know about."

"All right, I'm listening," Gwen said. She kept her voice firm; knowing that all Alice wanted was a business transaction. She admired the woman for even considering calling Torchwood, when she had every reason to hate the place. She picked up the pen that she had dropped. Lois was still watching her steadily, and she jotted down a note. _Call Andy. Go interview the family, and get the records from the police_.

Lois nodded, and stood as Alice began speaking again. "I live at Cangham House, 27 Cromer Road. Come down, and I'll show you what I can."

Gwen capped her pen, and looked down at the address. "I'll be there," she said, realizing that she did not recognize the address. She had been there, but had not been aware enough to register where she was. Now she calculated that Alice didn't live too far from Rhys's parents. To think, all that time they had driven out there, never knowing that Jack's daughter was nearby.

"Fine," Alice said, and Gwen snapped he phone shut. Lois and Martha were both watching her. She pressed a quick hand over her eyes, and stood.

"Lois, I said go. I've got an errand to run." She went around the desk, swung her coat on, and grabbed her handbag. Halfway to the door, she turned. "Martha, with me," she ordered. She wasn't entirely sure why she did this, and Martha's eyebrows raised as she reached for her own coat. For some reason, Gwen didn't want to be the one who went off on mysterious errands on her own. She already had to do that enough to make sure Flat Holm island was still running, even without Jack's direction.

"Need a doctor?" Martha asked, as they made their way to Gwen's car.

"That's not all that I hired you for, you know. However, you complain when I use you in any other capacity."

Martha ducked into the passenger seat and bit her lip "It was really just the endless Weevils. They're so-."

"Dirty?" Gwen offered, using one of the other woman's more frequent adjectives Martha used for the creatures.

Martha winced a little at her own descriptor being repeated. "Yeah, I suppose."

Gwen considered as she tapped Alice's address into the GPS. "That's Cardiff. It's how we work here. When you were last here it was all a bit grand, wasn't it? The labs, and death personified chasing us through a sterile hospital. And you and Jack did huge things with the Doctor, didn't you? He makes you feel like everything is on this grand scale. But it's not all like that. You can't be elitist about alien involvement."

It was a conversation they should have had long ago, when Martha first stepped in with her perfectly coiffed hair and pressed skirts. Gwen didn't doubt that she had seen rough conditions during her stint with the Doctor, judging by the small things that Jack let slip, but her time with UNIT had given her an air of superiority.

"I'm not!" Martha protested as they drove away from the Bay. The protest was loud, and insistent, in the way that people protested things that they thought that had hidden from others, and even themselves.

"Sure you are. I see you stick your nose up at slugging through the mud, and chasing after drunks on the Estates. Always asking why we don't let the police do that, and deal with the suspects after. You do it," she added, when Martha opened her mouth to argue again. "But we all see that you don't like it."

"Freelancing wasn't especially tidy," Martha pointed out, with a jutted lip that almost qualified as a pout. "And I've seen things worse than you've dreamed of."

"You don't know what I dream about," Gwen said, thinking of the nightmares that left her shaking silently in the dark. "But that's not the point. What is the point is that you've never done this with the crap recognition and disrespect we continually get. You've seen glory. Martha and this job comes with precious little glory. You've got to find it yourself."

Martha didn't reply to this. Occasional glances showed her still staring out the window, and Gwen didn't push her. it was a careful balancing act to prod her into seeing the truth, without alienating her. _It would be rather more impressive on a rooftop, _she thought. _Next time, I'm taking a leaf out of Jack's book_.

All of this was a leaf out of Jack's book, really. Gwen had been hesitant to call her out on this, but it had to be done. He would have done it; he wasn't afraid to confront people about the things that affected job performance. It was the other things he kept silent about. He had known about Gwen and Owen's affair, her betrayal, and he had kept silent. She knew that Andy saw more in Lois than just a receptionist, and she kept silent. Once, she might not have, but now she thought they needed their secrets.

For almost the whole rest of the drive, they were silent. Then, Gwen realized that she should probably debrief Martha on their destination. "You remember that I told you about Jack's daughter?" Martha nodded, perhaps still musing over what Gwen had told her. the knowledge of Alice's story lingered in the air between them. "She has something to show us."

They pulled up to the kerb of the suburban street. A tremour ran through Gwen's body as she found herself searching the pavement for a bright blue box. Shaking this off, she made her way to the steps of the house. Martha hung back as Gwen rapped on the door. It opened swiftly, just after Gwen heard Martha murmur, "it seems so normal." Gwen knew what she meant; one expected anything related to Jack to be eccentric, and abnormal to the nth degree.

"Hello again, Gwen," Alice said. Gwen noticed that there was no formality in her voice. Perhaps she didn't think Gwen deserved respect, or perhaps Torchwood would always be familiar to her.

"Hello. Alice, this is Martha Jones."

"You're both Torchwood?"

"We are." Gwen nodded.

Once again Alice's eyes drifted to the bulge at Gwen's middle, which was much more apparent than it had been when they last met. Four weeks could mean a lot of development for a foetus, Gwen had learned.

"I don't suppose you'd listen when I advised you to get out of this while you can?"

The flat tone made Gwen's heart tighten, and she wanted to fold the broken-looking woman into her arms. She might have, had she not been afraid of being stabbed by the sharp edges that were formed by her features. There was nothing Gwen could do for her, nothing anyone could, probably not even Jack.

Or maybe especially not even Jack.

"You had something we needed to know about?" Gwen prodded, not responding to the question, because everyone present knew her answer. She was invested in Torchwood for better or worse.

"Yes. Down the road, just there," she pointed. "There's an abandoned house where the kids play. Steven's mates." She swallowed. "They have something living there, and it's no animal I've seen. I don't think it's hurting them, or vice versa, but they're in and out all of the time. I'm positive it's not from Earth, so you needed to know."

"Thank you," Gwen said. She reached out to rest a hand on the woman's arm, but Alice jerked away, pulling down the sleeves of her sweater as though they were a protective coating. Gwen took her hand back. "I know you'd have rather not called us."

"Yes, well. I thought protecting the children was your new angle. Some children."

From the corner of her eye, Gwen saw Martha's mouth open, and she stepped back to press her elbow into her side. Alice had earned her bitterness.

"Call us if you need anything," Gwen instructed, going down the steps. to her credit, Alice nodded, rather than reminding her that Torchwood would be the last place to expect her call.

"Cheery. Hard to believe she's Jack's. Couldn't even offer us a cuppa."

"She's well within her rights. The outcome doesn't change what happened. And I'm certain she's Jack's. The pain in their eyes is identical."

Martha didn't say anything, and Gwen hoped she was sobered by the reminder that Gwen had seen a side of Jack that she hadn't, even though they save the world together. Gwen had done that too, more than once.

The approached the house that Alice had pointed to. Gwen tried the door, and was surprised to see that the knob gave under her hand. She took her gun out of its holster and pushed the door open.

"Really, it's time you let someone else go first," Martha murmured as they stepped over the threshold. Gwen turned to glare at her, but was interrupted by the sound of raucous laughter coming from above them.

Gwen began up the stairs, treading carefully, in case any of the stairs were rotten. The house did not seem to be too dilapidated, but you could never be certain. In the upstairs corridor they could identify children's laughter coming from the partially-open door at the end of the hall. Gwen made a beeline for the door, ducking against the wall just before entering. "Let's not go in all guns blazing," she whispered.

Martha nodded, and lowered her gun slightly, though neither put their weapon back in the holster. "Right. One, two-," she mouthed '_three'_ and they started into the room.

Gwen had seen many strange things over her yeas with Torchwood, and had spent a good amount of time gaping. She liked to think, though, that she had gotten over that, for the most part. The sight that greeted them in the airy bedroom cured her of that notion.

Unconsciously showing her greater experience, Martha was not speechless—or maybe that was just how she was. Never lost for words. "Are we on the CBBC or something?"

Gwen could see where she got the idea. The room was brightly lit, with wide windows and scattered all over it were primary coloured toys, many of which were blinking and making noise. What really made the room look like a nursery school programme on the telly was the human-sized cat standing in the centre of the room with a blond-haired child riding on his shoulders.

"That Rift of yours means business," Martha said as the children began to turn to them with wide-eyed looks of fear.

"Ours," Gwen corrected. "Now, what is it?" Sometimes Martha's experience had its perks, which was why Gwen hadn't chastised her air of privilege more strongly. She did mean well, and have uses.

"The Doctor just called them Cat People. They are an evolved housecat that bred with humans. They don't exist for billions of years. We were in five billion and fifty-three, and they could have evolved earlier but-."

Gwen put up her hand. "Right. Billions of years, got it. More pertinent question: they don't speak English, do they?"

"Well, the TARDIS… no, I assume not."

The Cat Person gently set the child down, and crossed the room to them. Gwen was entranced by its deepset eyes, but as she stared at it, she thought its face seemed rather thin. It was draped, she now saw, in an oversized man's suit.

"Cat," it said, pointing to its own chest. Then, it pointed to the child it had set on the ground, which was now clinging to one orange and white stripped leg. "Michael," it continued. The little boy smiled, revealing pearly white teeth. It continued, pointing out each child clustered around the room. They had all stopped playing, and were staring at Gwen and Martha. "Julie," the cat finished, pointing at a girl in pigtails who was sitting nearby. She looked to be about ten, and the oldest child by far. The cat now watched them expectantly.

"Gwen," she said, and then turned to Martha. "Martha," she added, pointing. The cat repeated their names, and its lips turned upwards in what she assumed was a smile. Did these kind of gestures change after fifty-billion years?

"Where are you from?" Gwen asked, softly. The cat blinked, hiding and revealing its shimmering eyes, and then it shook its head, looking down at the child on its leg.

"Cat appeared," the small boy offered, popping a finger out of his mouth to do so.

Gwen looked down at the boy, over at Martha, and then over at the smiling Cat Person. She sighed. Sometimes "guns blazing" was easier.

In the end, they sent the children home, with reassurances that their friend would be fine. They were banking on adults' faith in a child's imagination, and Gwen planned to monitor the neighbourhood. If necessary, they could have a story printed in the paper regarding children's water intake and hallucinations, but she doubted it would come to that. One little boy burst into tears when they directed that he go home, and Gwen was touched to see the cat crouch down and dry his tears with a paw.

"Good Brennan," the cat said, in a voice like a purr. "Bye."

The boy sniffed, and hugged it tightly, before scampering off with the others. Before Julie left they were able to find out that they had been sneaking food to the Cat Person for three weeks, and that explained its lack of body fat. Only in storybooks could a creature be fed off of table scraps.

She rang Lois, who had returned to the base by then, and told her to search the database for languages from the five-billions. "And bring in food. Fish, preferably."

"I wonder if that's considered stereotyping," Martha mused, as they turned to leave the neighbourhood.

Gwen raised an eyebrow at her, and after a moment they both burst into laughter.

At base Lois went wide-eyed at the sight of the docile Cat Person. To her credit, though, she snapped into action after a second, working Toshiko's translation program. It took some hand motion to convince the Cat to speak in its language into the computer's speaker, but they managed it. Gwen hoped that Tosh had had a chance to rewrite the program after the incident with the plug.

Remembering that time with Owen, she surveyed the room as Lois showed the creature a monitor filled with alien text. Gwen felt the daily longing for the people that she had lost, and imagined Jack was somewhere feeling the same longing, the same pain. It made her feel closer to him for a moment that was broken only by Lois's triumphant, "Got it!" and the cat's startled look as the computer speaker echoed the phrase in a language no human in the room had heard before.

As it turns out, Castos was a nursery school teacher in his time, which explains his hand with the kids. He's a nice bloke (cat?), willing to learn English. We're not quite sure what do to with him. Integrating him into society is a bit of a no-go at this point, when people think all aliens are out to get them. Freda's one thing, but we know for a fact her family was in hiding even in her time, so we can assume there weren't Cat People running about. Our computers, and most other things, are utterly foreign to him, not even in museums. I suppose once the baby is born he could be in charge of the Torchwood crèche. Rhys would love that, wouldn't he?

Hard to believe that there will actually be a baby here, isn't it? In this world, when people can be minding their own business and then suddenly five billion years in the past? Okay, admittedly, Castros had won some sort of contest, and was in a ship investigating the remains of the Earth. He got sucked in by the Rift while spacewalking, or something. I didn't quite understand the story, but still. The danger is there. This baby could have a bad encounter on the street, run afoul of a Weevil, or have their life altered utterly by a man in a blue box. Or a man in a greatcoat.

You can't know what the world will give you. Love. Loves. New people, new places, new times. My mum, well she doesn't know now what I've seen, and couldn't have imagined when I was in that crib that's in my spare bedroom now. You couldn't know what would happen when you held your daughter for the first time—or when you hired me, or Ianto, or Tosh, or Owen. You can only act on what you know at the time, and what you hope.

I hope we find a place for Castros. I hope my baby grows up happy. I hope you find what you're looking for.

I miss you,

Gwen

To: gwen[dot]cooper [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

From:jack[dot]harkness [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk

Date: January 29th, 2011

Re: RE: Cats

Adrift! A little boat adrift!

And night is coming down!

Will _no_ one guide a little boat

Unto the nearest town?

So Sailors say—on yesterday—

Just as the dusk was brown

One little boat gave up its strife

And gurgled down and down.

So angels say—on yesterday—

Just as the dawn was red

One little boat—o'erspent with gales—

Retrimmed its masts—redecked its sails—

And shot—exultant on!

Emily Dickinson


	6. Chapter Five

To: {at}torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk  
From: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk  
Date: February 28th 2010  
Re: Dementors?

Dear Jack,  
The rain hasn't stopped for weeks. The gloom that I've felt constantly for months has washed over Cardiff this February. Castros is doing well, but I think homesickness and culture shock are wearing on him. Lois has taken over the role of English teacher, but there are days when the translation program makes that feel redundant. We've rigged up quite the costume to get him in and out of the base. It's not like we would leave a creature cooped up in that warehouse all the time. Well, at least not a sentient communicative one. He's not a Weevil. Is that a mark of my influence on Torchwood, Jack? That I see a humanoid being as not a Weevil, and would not be okay with shooting him, or locking him in the vaults?

Teaching English to a cat—well Cat Person, as he reminds us- is far from the worst the Rift has thrown at us this month. Andy is of the opinion that the hail is Rift-tainted and that's why it seems to go straight for humans and cars. There's more than that of course, but listening to flashcard drills is much easier than focusing on revising reports of some of our darkest days. I understand, now, why you encouraged frivolity in the Hub. I always wondered if Owen, Tosh and I didn't get out of hand sometimes. You would just stand above us, watching with that indulgent smirk and crossed arms, while we played basketball and knocked down wires. Was it because we were still always ready for action? I'd love frivolity here, but we're still working on readiness. The shocked looks when the monitors go off frustrate me to no end.

Martha and I are almost always the ones to take the remote monitor home. Not because Lois or Andy would ignore it or anything, it's just…. In case. I reckon it's not the best way to train them, but it's safe. Well, it's the closest thing to safe that we have, and that's all I can cling onto.

The Hub is coming along well, though it will be a long time until it's done. Still, we're getting there. That's a light at the end of the tunnel, isn't it? Still, there's so much to do. So much and they don't see all that's out there in the night. They don't see what makes it worth it, either. I realized that recently. We're working on that. Torchwood…we're not there yet. We're not Torchwood… that word holds so much weight, that sometimes I wish I'd never heard it.

*_*_*

Gwen shook off her umbrella violently as she stepped over the threshold of the house that still smelled like fresh paint.

"Couldn't be Gwen!" a voice called from the kitchen.

She smiled to herself and slid the still-damp umbrella into the stand by the door. "Nah, it's an alien doppelganger," she yelled back. She shrugged out of her coat, and slid her boots off. This at least gave her a feeling of being drier than she had been, which was about all she could hope for until the damp of the day left her bones.

In the kitchen, Rhys was standing at the counter with a salad bowl in front of him. "I'll do that," she offered, holding her hand out for the tongs he was using to toss it. He slid the bowl across towards her, and kept watching her with a curious tilt of the had.

"What? Still got purple gook on me, do I?" she asked, sliding a hand over her cheek. "We're really lucky that thing's venom wasn't poisonous, at least not to humans. Andy looked like a grape, he was so covered in it."

He shook his head. "No, you're fine. Gorgeous, actually. It's just—you haven't joked about your work like that in a long while. Not about Torchwood, or anything really."

She paused in her salad tossing, resting one hand lightly on the clean countertop. She considered his statement, catching the edge of her lip under her teeth. Her first instinct was to chide him for being ridiculous, but an honest voice in the back of her head told her that he had a point.

"Well… I am now," she said. "Someone's got to see the humour in our lives. I'll go mad if I don't. Wouldn't want that, would we?"

Rhys smirked and slid around behind her. He rested his hands on the counter, on either side of her. He sounded her, and leaned in to kiss her neck. "There are times that I like you mad."

A shiver coursed down her spine, and she turned her head to meet his lips. They were warm and familiar. It amazed her that after days spent running from monsters that wanted to eliminate her with one shot of poison, he could still feels safe in her husband's human embrace.

She tried to forget that there was a time when she hadn't felt safe with Rhys. Torchwood had felt safer, sheltered by Jack and Owen's experience. Now she was the shield for the team, and she needed Rhys's separation from it all to anchor her.

"I didn't let it drift," she whispered.

"What's that?" Rhys said, kissing her behind the ear.

"Nothing. I love you. Let's eat, if we're going to. The meal looks lovely."

"I can think of things I'd rather eat," he growled.

She laughed, to stop herself moaning a little. "Mmm, so can I. They can wait though. I'm ravenous. Feed your wife and child, caveman."

"Fine," he grumbled, the vibrations from his voice reverberating against her back. He kissed the top of her head before he pulled away. She expected to feel cold when he left her to go over to the stove, but the fire in the living room gave the even the centrally heated kitchen a cozy glow that kept them connected.

They spoke little during supper, but not for lack of things to say. Somehow, she realized there would be the time for that later. All day she had been racing against time, always believing that they had so little time. Yet they had made it this far. They had what time they had, there was no need to rush through it. Things might go unsaid, she knew, but these moments were too precious to waste trying to spit out everything you might want someone to know. She realized that she was learning to accept the constant loom of death without always focusing on it.

"You're awfully thoughtful tonight, love. Anything troubling you?" Rhys asked, after they had finished eating. "Any thing new?" he added, with a small smile.

She shrugged, and stood to help him clear the plates from the table. "No. Well, we had a nasty creature running about Cathys, and Lois caught her first Weevil today, so I can finally reconfigure the Weevil hunting roster."

"Oh, I owe her a pint, then."

"She was so proud, and I just remembered when I felt that. Proud and amazed at what we did, even if it was horrible. I'd gotten so used to it, so jaded by the negatives. But we saved a woman's baby, and tomorrow's her wedding day. Castros had such a horrible thing happen to him, and he's in such good spirits most of the time. There is good in it. I forgot that. Sometime between losing Ianto, and Jack I forgot that. I even had it back for just a second when all those kids were safe, but it flitted away again. I've got to hold onto it, because if I don't, my team never will."

"Maybe that's why Jack left," Rhys mused. She looked up, startled. He never mentioned Jack's name to her. "He couldn't hold onto the good anymore, but he knew it would still be there."

"How did he know?" she asked.

He took the last plate fro her hand and set it in the sink. "There's you in it, that's how," he averred. "My good Gwen."

She reached up and put a hand on his bicep. Squeezing gently, she leaned in and kissed him, hard, latching onto his lips.

They didn't make it to the bedroom. Rather, they stumbled into the living room. He laid her on the couch. So often lately when they made love, she let him take her, relieved to have one responsibility that wasn't hers. Now, she pushed up, grasping his belt and turning them so now he was on the sofa.

"Gwen," he murmured as she undid the belt, and straddled him. His hands rested on her swollen belly, caressing her as he slid her sweater over her head. She put her hands on his shoulders, and together they forgot about the rest of the world.

Afterward there wasn't the wine that there once had been, but there was the fire. They wrapped themselves in blankets and lay on the sofa. Gwen felt more relaxed than she had in months. So, of course, her mobile rang.

"Sometimes I wish I didn't know better than to tell you to leave it." He rose behind her as she shuffled into the kitchen for her phone, and didn't see the pensive look that crossed over her face. When had she missed his acceptance of this fact?

He held her as she flipped open the mobile. "Lois?"

"Gwen, I'm really sorry to bother you. Only, it's Andy."

"What about him?" she asked, bracing herself against the counter.

"He had the Rift monitor tonight, right? Well, I left my wallet at the base, so Castros and I went to get it. The alarms were going mad, and he's not answering his mobile."

Gwen bit back the chastisement for taking Castros all over town. They'd leased a flat in Lois's building and his disguise worked for going in between, but it was all temporary until they could have a Hub where he could have a decent living space, like Jack had had. She wanted to create some kind of perception filter for him too, so he could go out some, but a mask and some heavy clothing were not the same.

"You phoned his flat?"

"I went by there. He's not there. I would have called Martha, but she and Mickey went to London to see her parents, so…"

"No, yeah, I know. It's fine. See if you can get a track on his car. I'll leave the house in a minute and try to find him, all right?"

"All right. See you soon."

Gwen clamped the phone shut. "They're like teenagers. Give them an inch of responsibility, and they go missing."

"Too much to hope for that then they show up in the morning with a bad hangover?" Rhys mumbled, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"Not since Owen's day," she quipped. "Come on. Let's go find my clothes. I've no idea where my bra landed."

"Far, far away is where I was aiming for," he agreed.

She shook her head, and smiled at him, but a part of her brain was focused on trying to figure out where in the world Andy might be.

She dressed quickly in the living room, fixed her hair in the hall mirror and donned her coat and boots once again. As she was about to dash out the door, Rhys appeared and shoved a thermos of tea into her hands. "It'll keep you warm when I can't.

For just a moment she felt tears well in her eyes. "Want to ride along?" she asked.

"Nah. Someone's got to hold down the fort here." He kissed her, and ten held open the door for her. "I'll be here when you get back."

She smiled at him, and then darted out into the still-pounding rain. Once in her car, she slipped the tea into its cup holder, and rang Lois. "His car is stopped on the east side of Bute Park. Near the uni."

"Oh, god, so this time the uni's there and he's disappeared," Gwen muttered, starting the car and turning it around on the road so it headed west.

"Looks that way," Lois agreed, and then gave Gwen the coordinates. "D'you want me to head up that way as well?"

Gwen considered for a moment. She might need back-up, and while she wanted someone at base to monitor the computers, with no one else in the field she had to agree. "Yeah. Does Castros know enough about our tech to be of use if we need him?"

"Yeah, he's quite good with it."

"Perfect. See you in a bit."

She hung up the phone, and concentrated on driving, the tea in its open thermos surrounding her with an aroma that made her feel as though she hadn't really left Rhys's tight embrace.

When she pulled up next to Andy's abandoned car, though, she knew very well that she was far away from the comforts of home. The nearby gate to the park was still open, so she ran towards it through the rain. Not too far off she could make up a ring of dark, shadowy shapes. They were crouched in a ring, around something. She was willing to bet that that something was a someone, and that she knew who it was.

It was getting to the point that running was not a skill that she could claim mastery at any more. Still, she moved as fast as she could without over balancing. She slid her gun out of the holster as she approached, and when she saw Andy kneeling at the centre of the circle, she shot at the nearest shadowy figure.

It fell, and the others turned on her. She had a moment's vision of a dozen or so tall, wiry figures. They looked to be made of tendons, and their turning was like the movement of a marionette's wires, without the solidity of the puppet. Her bullets flew right through them, it seemed, and they began to float towards her.s

One shaking hand reached up to touch her comm. "Castros," she said, hoping that the transfer of the translation program to the comms had worked in the way that Mickey had said it was supposed to. They really needed a tech guru of their own. "See what you can find on creatures that look as though they're made of rubber bands… and…" She paused as they grew closer to her, forming a ring around her as they had around Andy. She was suddenly aware of how dark the night was. The cold and rain seeped under her skin.

She remembered the grey clouds of the day, how dreary they made the whole world feel. It never would be good again would i? She was kidding herself, really. With her in charge they were just a gang of ragamuffins running around after aliens. It was all a great joke, without Jack. She might as well let these creatures swoop down on her, eliminate her, take her away from this mess. Then the others would realize how fruitless this was. Rhys could find himself a proper wife, and the baby wouldn't have to come out in a world of darkness.

It all made sense to her, in that moment, when she was so sure that the world was never going to get better. It was a deeper sense of despair than she had felt in the time of the 456; then she had felt desperation more than despair. She had been grabbing at straws to find a solution. Now she was quite all right with giving up, with giving into the rattling breath sounds surrounding her. The creatures descended, making deep sucking noises. It was almost as though they were sucking the hope from her, she realized with a drab awareness of the fact.

She bit her lip in preparation for what she knew was coming, not out of fear, but out of preparation. Her tongue caught a drop of tea that had lingered on her upper lift from a hasty gulp as she drove up to the park. A flash of memory darted into her conscious; Rhys's smile when he realized that she was now able to joke about Torchwood once more. She blinked, and for a second the clouds that had engulfed her vision dissipated a little. She thought of Rhys's arms around her that night. As she thought of him, the creatures moved back a little bit, and she held onto the memory.

Other faces flashed into her consciousness. Lois's triumphant cry as she maneuvered a Weevil into the cell in the base, Martha's laugh whenever Castros managed a pun in English—his own not the translator's—. Then there were others, faces that initially made the creatures descend again when they appeared in her mind's eye, but Gwen shook her head slightly. Tosh lying dead on a medbay chair became Tosh rolling her eyes at one of Ianto's deadpan quips, or sharing a boys are stupid, aren't they? look with Gwen over their Chinese takeaway. Owen's hostile snarl on the day they stopped their affair became the look of contentedness he had during those few days with Diane.

Then there was Jack. At first she thought that this was going to be it. He was, in a way, the source of her unhappiness. Surely now her brain would oppress all happiness that could be discovered when it focused on Captain Jack Harkness. Instead, though, the first thing she saw was Jack's laughing eyes looking up at her from across the Hub, the easy smile he wore as he surveyed them working diligently, and then caught her eye. He had had such fun running Torchwood, finding light in all of the dark, and now he had left. Though he had never directly charged her with this task, she was going to take it upon herself. She could find the light in the dark, even when Jack couldn't.

"We're not hopeless!" she said aloud. "We may be a small planet, and maybe it's easier to pick up off one-by-one and feed off of our sadness, but we're far from hopeless!" She held onto the certainty she wished she had about these words, focused on the joy she had found in Torchwood. All things told, she still loved her job. She wasn't sure why she knew that this knowledge was what would keep the creatures away, but it worked. They began to drift and as she worried about their getting loosed on Cardiff, they commenced disintegration, joining the clouds in the foggy sky.

"Gwen? Oh my God, Andy!"

Holding up a hand to keep Lois away from the remants of the creatures, Gwen turned to check on Andy. He was slowly rising from his knees, but there was a hollow look in his eyes. Gween figured that the best thing for it was to get him away from there, so she put a hand on his shoulder and led him towards her car. On the way to the base she made him drink from the thermos of tea, purposefully omitting the fact that it was from Rhys with love.

He stared straight ahead the whole drive, and got out without a word, heading for the warehouse door. "What was it?" Lois asked, following him.

"JK Rowling had to get her ideas somewhere, I expect. Andy, with me." She jerked her head to the back where they had a camp bed set up on the other side of the cells. She made him sit down, and stared into his eyes, searching for any kind of change.

His eyes were human, but they seemed changed somehow. There was a hollow despair that surrounded his pupils. Even though his eyes were on her, he didn't seem to be seeing her. "Look at me," she ordered.

He blinked, and seemed to focus a bit more. There was still something missing in his aaze, and she cast about, trying to figure out what it was. Then she realized. His eyes were missing that slightly hang-dog expression he still got when he watched her. At first she wondered if he might have given it up when she wasn't paying attention, but no. She saw the crinkling smile he had given her while handing her a mug of tea earlier in the day. That was missing.

He had given up.

Later, she would decide that this was the day on which she had realized that she had gained instincts. She once again knew what to do without knowing how she had gained the knowledge. Without a word, she leant forward, cupped his face in her hand and kissed him, hard.

There was no response for a moment, and she wondered if she'd been wrong. Then, Andy pressed back, deepening the kiss. She let it go on for a minute, and then broke away. He stared at her, gaping-mouthed, his eyes swimming in confusion. She smiled.

"Good, you're back." She brushed her hair behind her ears. She bit her lip, and his eyes bored into her for a moment until she turned on her heels and marched towards the door, passing Lois and Castros who were both staring at her. "I hope the three of you can at least hold down the fort until the morning. Not a big ask, is it?"

They called out assents, but she wasn't really listening. She had a husband to get back to.

*_*_*  
Maybe there were other ways to handle the situation, I don't know. It seemed like something you might do, to be honest. I'm not as great a sex symbol as you with the ever-expanding football I keep under my blouse, but it did snap him to.

We've nearly finished the Hub. We'll start moving in next month, and then go from there. We're a rag-tag team, but Torchwood always is, isn't it? I did some digging in the archives after that incident, because I wanted to see if there were any encounters with those creatures before. I'd never done much down there before, it was always Ianto's place, wasn't it? Anyway, from what I saw, teams were always losing and gaining members. Having issues with togetherness—and I at least think we're unlikely to have a mutiny.

I miss you every day. I always wonder what you would do. When I can come up with it sometimes I do it.

Oh Jack, if I could just see you. Most of all I worry that you're OK. Please let me know that you really are.

To: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk  
From: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk  
Date: February 28th 2010  
Re: re: Dementors?

March 26th. 11PM on the crest of the hill where Owen found the asteroid, and we went stargazing.

A/N can't believe I forgot to update this over here.


End file.
